It Hurts!

POF Factory...

14:30...on dot

Off goes the siren announcing change of the shift for factory employees.

Time when mums get their children washed and ready for dads who come back after a long and tiring working day at the factory...
wives who in their all hurry open the bolts of their house doors knowing the person entering would not be anyone else but their loved ones who would be home in a few minutes time.
Children who are all ready to have dinner in the laps of their dads...
and..
dads, husbands and brothers.......
who all finish off their day thinking of nothing but their family....

Today at 14:32...sharp!

and none of them knew that today....the siren will not be a routine!

I was shaken by the news of bombings in POF Wah Cantt.
I cried like a baby talking to my dad....
I knew my immediate family was safe within hours but still...
It hurts and it hurts big time..

Coz no outsider can imagine the closely-knit communities in POF colonies.
I still remember the fire incident in Havelian that took life of only 11 people(“only” as compared to massive death tolls currently in news) and how it had crippled our lives for months and months. i hardly ever saw anyone smiling in my colony. Everyone walked past you trying to hide their grief and giving you strength just by being there with you.

I remember a man holding a banner that I saw in a newspaper when bombings in Karachi were a norm and people seemed to be immune to these kind of news as they had no effect on rest of the country and it was only a centralised and also NOT a Terror attack back in late nineteen eighties.
It said....

“When your own people will die then you will know our pain!”

It was stuck to my brain and the first time I remembered it when disastrous earthquake hit my very own area of North West Pakistan and ...now....

When my very own place has been hit.